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Thursday, February 5, 2015

Are you prepared to be stranded?

I always worry about getting stranded in my car. Despite its looks, my car is almost five years old. Not bad and I've kept up the recommended maintenance.

But things happen, like deer unexpectedly in the road.

So you can never be too careful.

For me, I have an emergency blanket and my triple A card in my car!

But for my children, when they first started driving I took no chances. They didn't have new vehicles. So my husband and I built each of them a kit. Here is what we put in it. Remember we live in Wisconsin so making sure they could survive if they broke down in winter was essential.

Jumper cables

emergency blanket

road flares

fold-able shovel

kitty litter

fuses

rope

first aid kit

seat belt cutter

glass breaker

a few granola bars

a couple of bottles of water

gloves

hand warmers

rain poncho

umbrella

flashlight

I don't remember what else we put in there.

I do know that they had to use it.

The most used items were the shovels, kitty litter for traction and the jumper cables.

On an almost daily basis they shoveled themselves out of poor parking choices!

My daughter constantly used the jumper cables as she would invariably forget to turn off one light or another in her car.

I also keep boots, snow pants and extra gloves and a hat in my car during winter. If I'm stranded I plan on keeping warm. I try to keep a full tank of gas during the winter. You just never know what will happen.

The website stated that it will all fit into a 19 qt box. I can't picture the size. I'm sure if I saw it I would go, okay, this is doable. And well, duct tape is useful for anything!

Some of it seems a tad much, but if you were stranded in the middle of nowhere, I imagine all of this would be used in one way or another. This list misses a few things that I know I'd want like the shovel and kitty litter, focusing mainly on surviving. Me, if I was stuck, I'd like a way to get out. The shovel would help. My son would agree, lol, as he used his almost daily through out the winter!